Leadership, the key factor in engagement

Best Companies, the name behind The Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For lists, will be celebrating its millionth employee survey this year, that’s one million employee opinions sought from more than 3000 organisations since 2000. This gives us an unparalleled insight into what makes employees tick and how to get the best out of them.

Through analysis of this research, we discovered that there are eight key factors that form the backbone of overall employee engagement – Leadership, My Company, My Manager, Personal Growth, My Team, Fair Deal, Giving Something Back and Wellbeing.

The factor that has the strongest correlation with engagement is Leadership. Employees must have faith and trust in the senior leadership team to be engaged. With the turmoil we have experienced in the last year this means that leaders have to be up to the challenge. They simply can’t take their eye off the ball when it comes to being visible to employees and communicating – even when times are tough and the focus might be more on a fluctuating share price.

But what our research tells us is that there are three essential actions that leaders can action to boost staff engagement.

Gain their trust.

Live the organisation’s values.

Inspire your teams.

It can’t be that simple, surely?

Well, yes it can. Analysis collated from last year’s survey process revealed huge differences in the percentage of engaged employees agreeing to questions in the leadership factor compared to the percentage of disengaged employees agreeing to the same questions:

FACT: There is a 54% difference between engaged and disengaged employees for the statement ‘I have great confidence in the leadership skills of the senior management team’.

FACT: There is a 51% difference for the statement ‘senior managers truly live the vales of this organisation’.

FACT: And if that wasn’t enough proof, there is also a 50% difference for the statement ‘I am inspired by the person leading this organisation’.

See what your employee’s say it’s like to work for your organisation… after all they know better than anyone! You’ll also be able to benchmark how your organisation compares against others.